On the "Expansion or Arms Industries" saga

The way that I (and a non-trivial number of other successful players) approach this does amount to expanding-only for a long time (but not forever). This is not because I/they ignore building AIs, but because I/they evaluate the situation and conclude the AIs aren't the best investment during each/any of those several game-days. Capturing cities that usually start out producing more than an AI upgrade, and that produce even more as their morale improves is more attractive to me/them.

However, at some point I/they either will have become successful enough to start investing in AI because the mobilization queues are full (and it's not time to annex any place), or will have become unsuccessful enough that it's time to archive that game.

For many game-days in every [Public] game I've played (after my first 2 or 3 games)(no Rising Tides, no Apocalypse, no 4X), each time I've evaluated the first phrase of my sentence, my past experiences pushed me (more and more with each game) in the direction of concluding that [public game] low-cost city-capture opportunities are almost always plentiful, not scarce.

So . . . Each game day when you evaluate what's going on, if you conclude that there are low-hanging-fruit cities to be had, and if your mobilization queues aren't full, then that's another day when you don't construct an AI.

When I want to distill this (too many words) story into a short one-sentence piece of advice, it becomes "Aggressively expanding to acquire more resources is better than building Arms Industries". Obviously some nuance gets sacrificed in that shortening process.

Yeah - For me that early surplus is "spoken for" before I make my first click, and the projects that lay claim to it are making units and making buildings required for making units.

Sometimes a Rares AI and/or an Electronics AI get built even if those cities aren't where I need an AI for mobilizing units.

However, when it makes sense, I mobilize units in the Rares and Electronics cities so that I don't have to build any "unnecessary" AIs early in the game.

I'm certainly not violently disagreeing with you, and "Yes", I too want to do some (computerized) pondering instead of making the rubble bounce here.

Aggressively = If you aren't nervous that you're expanding too fast, you aren't expanding aggressively enough. I almost over-estimate the strength and/or skill of my opponents.

Ultimately, having a mathematical model to estimate the balance between those options, even with margin of error, would be interesting for balance.

CoN isn't a game about economy or "playing tall" (it just can't happen), BUT there should be a sweet spot of "building the eco to fuel the machine of war".

As you hinted here and there : if the machine of war fuels the machine of war in a too spectacular way, it's a "flaw" in the general approach.

ok do this,

Take a game you're in and look at 3 x 3:

Three newly conquered cities (Worse Case),
Three average conquered cities,
Three Annexed Cities late game (Best Case),

That will give us some numbers to discuss.
I know mostly the ArmInd benefits I think...
I think I know the answers but it's worth checking

To be perfectly honest with you, beyond writing this reply, when I invest any additional time into this topic, I'd like to do it by picking up where I left off working on my simulation.

That's what I meant when I wrote, "I too want to do some (computerized) pondering instead of making the rubble bounce here.", earlier.

Here's a link to a post in the thread describing the simulation and my data-collection efforts:
Simulating Resource Output, Building Construction, and Unit Mobilizations

The resource production calculations I do in the simulation are a straight lift from the calculations PlayBabe put into this most excellent GoogleSheets spreadsheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j8pqFPnJTvHgir4WvIZN5UMofnpgNDLTwraU00ziHAA/edit#gid=205424418

I've already satisfied myself that those calculations are indeed accurate, and that they tell us that a city with ordinary population and 25% morale (captured from a 5-city player) produces a bit more than an Arm Industry upgrade in a 5-city country.

That output difference increases as the captured city's morale rises.

Here:

Did it all for the same resource type. Could only find 1 annexed (These are not my cities). Homeland city in there too with a new start screenshot and one end game.

So about 4 days is it, to get to lvl 4 AI, in order to get that extra 555 resources at 75% morale. Capture 3 cities at 25% morale and you’re more or less at 55% of the AI output. Once morale hits the 40% region you have surpassed it. To match the tron output you'd need to likely war with 3 countries. If just to match aggregate resource amount, any 3 cities will likely do.

Time to match tron output at 1 country/day = 3 days + time to hit 40% morale. Likely cannot match the AI within that timeframe unless war is fought on a multiple front basis where all 3 tron cities are targeted as priority. If the AI city morale fluctuates, it changes things. Even if it doesn’t beat for tron output, the floor is rising across the board on aggregate via a 3-country conquest.

That’s just 1x AI build vs aggressive conquest. The question is whether a general hybrid approach beats pure conquest. I don’t know how you even begin to model that. All I have to go on is in-game results and looking at the macro picture where these builders don't keep pace. And every time I’ve put AI (past lvl 1) into my build order early/mid game, I always finish with less vp and less units. I notice my usual timeline for absorbing x number of countries has elongated. It could be mere correlation, or other variables at play, though I try to account for this as best I can. In general, I have no other empirical data to assess cause and effect. My general suspicion, is that if the expansion rate is high enough, then arms industries are simply irrelevant and at worse, a detriment.

For me, the wait to catch-up on upgrades are small delays that add up. Feeding into mobilisation delays and stalling momentum and the cumulative effect of expansion. You’re arriving at the scene later - the opposition is a little better prepared, you face more resistance and progress stalls. If you’re blobbing harder & quickly vp ranking first, you’re also potentially discouraging unwanted attacks that set you back. The quicker push also yields quicker access to cash that allows for earlier market orders. I clear those market orders in no time at all which is a massive boost. I think there's unaccounted-for intangibles that factor beyond the math.

Even with the surplus stockpile at the start, practically every penny of that is earmarked for continual mobilisation. If units continue to pour out, they aid the early expansion process. Day 4 - I’m off melee & I start operating 2/3 fronts. I need a certain no. of units in play by then. Even holding off AI upgrades on day 1 has a downstream effect that allows those units to manifest. It absolutely affects the speed of initial occupation when you look past the first day. In general, there’s a minimum army size I need to hit 200 cities by day 30. Early AI building always seems to delay that.

idk - I don't have much else to say on this. If anyone produces some model or data that says otherwise, I'll begrudgingly toe the line and build the damn things. Then I'd just have to figure out why I can't achieve as much with them.

@zozo – Instead of pondering this ad infinitum, why not just test it? A game with no AI upgrades past lvl 1 for the first 2 weeks. Push mobilisation and compare.